doublegunshop.com - home Forums General Discussion DoubleGun BBS @ doublegunshop.com Eagles and lead poisoning

Yeah, you really can't help yourself. I understand it when you don't have a leg to stand on. It's all you have left.

I have a theory about lead. I think the whole anti-lead movement is hogwash. When a dead animal is found to contain traces of lead there is a rush to the conclusion that the animal died of lead poisoning.

Lead poisoning is a real thing, and it is a very ugly thing to watch happen to a human. But, it occurs only after a lifetime of repeated daily exposure to lead fumes or lead oxide. It will not occur from ingesting metallic lead in the form of bullets or shot.

Also, the idea that carrion eating animals ingest lead from hunter's bullets in gut piles smacks of a complete lack of knowledge of how things work. I have hunted for a lot of years and killed a lot of deer and other animals. So, I will speak only form my experience, which I think is a fair sampling. I will make a conservative estimate, from my observations, that 90% of the deer I have killed have no bullets or fragments remaining in their bodies. I try very hard to keep my bullets that I shoot at deer OUT of their guts. 90% are total clean passthroughs. Another 9% are passthroughs with some degree of fragmentation so there is a slight possibility that a tiny amount of lead did not exit the animal. I have recovered about 1% of the bullets (pieces) that I have shot at deer.

So, bullets in gut piles? Hogwash. Bullets in dead animals that were not found? Hogwash.

We may hunt waterfowl with only non-lead shot. Whether it be in the arctic, the great plains, or coastal marshes. Waterfowl. To my knowledge the only restrictions on lead shot in an area are the coastal marshes. Doves, quail, pheasants, anything else may be hunted with lead shot except of course while you are hunting waterfowl. So, lead shot is being used in the same areas that waterfowl frequent but are simply not being actively hunted with it.

Anyone who has actually set foot in a coastal marsh soon finds out that the water is about 1' deep and the mud is about ... well it goes to the center of the earth as far as I know. Lead is heavy. Your pocket knife is heavy. Drop your pocket knife in the coastal marsh and neither you or a mud eating shoveler is going to get it back. The same thing happens with lead shot. It hits the mud and keeps on going. Ducks just simply don't have the ability to dive into 3' of mud to gag down lead shot.

As a duck hunter who has lived and hunted in both the lead shot world and the non-lead shot world I can say that the number of ducks that have flown away, swam away or simply gotten away crippled from the use of steel shot is far greater than the number I have killed with lead shot total.

So, any reason to not use lead shot, is pure Hogwash.

Biting into a lead shot hurts and is not recommended. Biting into a steel shot will break a tooth and cost $250 - $2000 depending on which tooth and what has to be done. That's Hogwash too! Because it doesn't have to be that way.

I've seen sporting clays courses set up over water. They use lead shot. When there is no shooting there are ducks and other water birds out there all the time. Those ducks aren't ingesting lead? No, they're not, ...

Because it's all Hogwash.

That's my theory.

Leaded gasoline is another story. Elemental lead vaporized in the heat of an internal combustion engine and deposited on the roadway, washes into the bar ditch and does indeed contaminate the soil and plants and anything that ingests those plants. But the entire bar ditch could be covered with lead shot and it would not do the same thing.

Alan

Brother, I hate to say this but judging an animal based on it's evolutionarily developed method of food gathering is foolish anthropomorphism of the highest degree. There is no "better" or more "noble" method of gathering food. There is just what it is.

They contribute to the food chain and ecosystem regardless of how they gather food. They have their place. As do all animals. What we should be watching for is excessive population loss or gain based on man's influence on the environment. Not judging one animal's worth based on a food gathering method we would prefer not to use ourselves.

Yup

Incorrect. There are many "areas" where you cannot hunt ANYTHING with lead shot. Example: All federal WPA's (Waterfowl Production Areas). Even if you're only hunting pheasants (or whatever else) on any WPA anywhere in the country, you are restricted to nontoxic shot only.

There are also "area" restrictions under state law. In Iowa, for example, there are several counties in which ALL public hunting areas are nontoxic shot only. Quite a bit of public land in South Dakota is also restricted to nontoxic shot only, even if you're hunting pheasants rather than ducks. In Wisconsin, if you hunt doves on DNR land, you must use nontoxic shot.

Add them up, there are quite a few areas--primarily (but not all) areas used by waterfowl--where, even if you're not hunting waterfowl, you can't use lead shot. Last season, my hunting partner and I shot several pheasants on a public area in Iowa. In that particular county, there was no county-wide restriction on lead shot on public hunting areas. But we had to use nontox on that specific area. Clearly marked with signs indicating the restriction.

Whatever else we might choose to do to continue to use lead shot (which I use in all my upland hunting wherever it's legal), we're beating our heads against the wall if we think we're going to do anything about the nontoxic shot rule for waterfowl. Or, in many places, nontoxic only restrictions on areas used by waterfowl. We lost that battle long ago. What works for the pro-lead side of the argument: Under current regulations, the EPA has been denied the authority to make any rules on lead ammunition. As long as that rule stands, we're pretty much safe from any further nontoxic restrictions out of DC. However, the states can do pretty much whatever they decide to do--which can be pretty darned restrictive if you happen to live in California. So focus on fighting your battles at the state level. And demand "good science" from those who would push to further restrict lead ammunition.

We tried good science in CA and we got crap back from our legislators such as, "hunters are poisoning the homeless population by donating wild game to homeless shelters because the game meat is contaminated with lead." You can't make this stuff up.

Oh no disagreement brother canvasback ;-)

My point was that given a chance Eagles will be eating deer that are shot and never recovered over most any other food source available. And there a LOT of deer that are shot and never recovered.

The USFWS picture of the dead Eagles I posted is from Wisconsin where rifles are used for deer hunting. On the other side of the River in SE Mn. it is restricted to shotgun slugs. Rifle bullets fragment easily and it doesn't take much lead to kill an Eagle, or Loon. They find a lot more dead Eagles on the Wi. side than the Mn. side of the River.

For what ever reason those 2 avian species are extremely sensitive to lead poisoning, it doesn't take much lead to kill them. It does not require a long term exposure to lead like it does most people, it is kryptonite to them.

Guess should get back to work, someplace out there someone has solved the same problem I am working on. And posted the code to do so. Time to use google and copy and paste. I didn't work this hard to get to the top of the food chain to reinvent the wheel. I have no problem scavenging the work of someone that parked a solution to my problem in the public domain. I believe most people given a chance pick the low hanging fruit.

There is also the truth that many eagles scavenge dump sites to eat the carcasses of dead domestic animals which are put to death with toxic drugs. the drug is then ingested and over time the eagle gets sick or dies.
Some dump sites use the practice of making sure they bury these animals because of the poisons but most don't only because of laziness.

Laws in Iowa about burying dead livestock are pretty strictly enforced.

Again, I try to only speak from experience. I've never hunted public land or on a WMA, so I don't know about them. Some years ago I hunted doves on some properties that TPW had under their control. We used lead shot to hunt doves and squirrels. If we had gone back to hunt ducks we would have had to use steel shot on the same property.

Alan